Published in March 1914 in the journal "Sovremennyi Mir" No. 3
Signed: V. Ilyich Lenin

Printed from the journal text

Less than ten years separate us from the turbulent epoch of 1905, yet the change that has taken place in Russia in this brief time seems enormous. Russia, as if suddenly, has been transformed from a patriarchal into a modern capitalist country. The ideologist of old Russia, L. N. Tolstoy, expressed this in a characteristic and amusingly-sad tirade, lamenting that the Russian people "have learned with astonishing rapidity to conduct revolutions and parliaments"{22}.

Of course, Russia's "sudden" transformation into a bourgeois country was possible in the course of five or ten years of the twentieth century only because the entire second half of the previous century had been one of the stages in the replacement of serf relations with bourgeois ones.

It is worth observing how this replacement has been reflected in the changed attitude toward Marxism on the part of our official, university, political economy science. In the good old days, the "destruction" of Marx was undertaken among us only by the extreme right, government professors. The entire liberal-Populist professorial science treated Marx with respect, "recognized" the labor theory of value, and thereby aroused naive illusions among "left-Populists" about the absence of soil for bourgeoisie in Russia.

Now we have suddenly produced a whole heap of liberal and progressive "Marx-eaters" like Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky{1} or Mr. Struve and suchlike. They all have laid bare the real content and significance of liberal-Populist "respect" for Marx: on the surface, respect remains; in fact, the ages-old misunderstanding of materialist dialectics and the theory of class struggle has inevitably led to renunciation of the labor theory of value itself.

Before 1905, the bourgeoisie saw no enemy other than serf-owners and "bureaucrats"; therefore, it attempted to treat the theory of the European proletariat sympathetically, attempted not to see "enemies from the left." After 1905, there is born in Russia a counter-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie, and professorial liberal science, while losing not the slightest prestige in "society," sets itself seriously to destroying Marx.

With the latest scholarly work of one such "serious" scholar, we intend to acquaint the reader.

I

In the edition of V. P. Ryabushinsky, there appeared last year the first part of the work of Mr. Peter Struve: "Economy and Price" (M., 1913). The notorious "union of science with industry," which was first marked by Mr. Ryabushinsky publishing Mr. Struve's disquisitions on "great Russia," has matured and solidified completely. Out of a simple union of science with industry, there has resulted already a union of science and industry and power: Mr. Struve's scholarly work was presented by him for the acquisition of an academic degree, which Mr. Struve was indeed awarded.

Mr. Struve assures us in the preface that his work was conceived some 15 years ago. There are thus all grounds for expecting a serious and solid work.

The author himself holds a very high opinion of his work, promising a "revision" (and, of course, a "critical" revision) of "certain traditional problems and propositions of political economy." The revision extends to the significance of price "as a fundamental concept of political economy."

"...This revision will lead to the formulation of new methodological tasks for our science in the spirit of consistent empiricism, relying upon rigorously elaborated precise concepts and clear distinctions."

The phrases cited from the concluding lines of Mr. Struve's "work" contain, so to speak, the leitmotif of his composition. The author's program is "consistent empiricism" (every fashionable philosopher nowadays necessarily begins with this, whatever oily priestdom his theory may lead toward) and "rigorous elaboration of precise concepts and clear distinctions." A familiar motif of the notorious "criticism," so often reducing itself to verbal scholasticism...

Mr. Struve wishes to see "consistent empiricism" especially in that part of his book—considerably larger in size—where he offers "studies and materials on the historical phenomenology of price" (this encompasses almost the entire second section of the first part). And he calls "rigorous elaboration of precise concepts and clear distinctions" the arguments of the first section and introduction "on certain fundamental philosophical motifs in the development of economic thinking," on "economy and society," and so forth.

We shall begin with Mr. Struve's fundamental theoretical arguments.

II

"From normative ethical understanding of value" (value; Mr. Struve stubbornly employs incorrect terminology, saying "value" instead of "value," though the incorrectness has long been proven to him), "which still prevails even among the canonists, is not so far removed, as it may seem, from the understanding of value as an internal 'basis' or 'law' of price. And indeed, we see that the canonists' 'bonitas intrinseca,' 'valor,' 'pretium naturale'{2} is transformed into 'intrinsic value' or 'natural value' or 'natural price'{3}, i.e., into the objective value{4} of later economists" (XXV).

Mr. Struve cannot fail to know that every scientific law, not merely the law of value, was understood in the Middle Ages in religious and ethical significance. The laws of natural science were likewise interpreted by the canonists in similar fashion. Therefore, there is no possibility whatsoever of taking seriously Mr. Struve's bringing together the law of price among the canonists and among representatives of classical political economy. One cannot call this a "thought" of Mr. Struve's; this is simply thought-fear, concealed by a purely childish trick.

Mr. Struve continues:

"'The law of value' becomes the 'idée fixe' of political economy. And the 'universalist' ('realist') motif of thinking emerges in this field most vividly in that writer in whom it is combined with the greatest breadth of general philosophical conception of economic science—in Marx. This motif is combined in him with a materialist worldview not elaborated in its details, but thereby all the more integral. Labor value is transformed not merely into a law, but into the 'substance' of price. As this mechanically-naturalistic and at the same time 'realist' conception of value vainly attempts to contain within itself the world of empirical phenomena of economic life and culminates in a grandiose and hopeless contradiction, we have already dwelt upon this more than once in our works."

There you have Mr. Struve's "scholarly" manner! There is his method of destroying Marx! A couple of supposedly scholarly terms, some kind of nod toward "motifs" of thinking, and a reference to a journal article from 1900 in "Life"{23}—that is the entire baggage. Rather meager, professor...

Not merely a "grandiose," but absolutely no contradiction in Marx between Volumes I and III of "Capital," between the labor theory of value and the formation of average prices on the basis of the law of value, has Mr. Struve succeeded in proving with his journal articles.

The medieval "distinction" between nominalism and realism, then the opposition of universalism and singularism, with which Mr. Struve juggles, yields absolutely nothing either for understanding Marx's theory, or for criticizing it, or for clarifying Mr. Struve's own theory (or pretension to his own theory). This is precisely a game, scholarly garbage, not science. Certainly, in the medieval struggle between nominalists and realists there are analogies with the struggle between materialists and idealists, but one can establish both these analogies and historically-continuous connections with many, many other theories, down not only to the Middle Ages, but to antiquity. To study seriously even the connection between medieval disputes and the history of materialism would require a special investigation. But our author has nothing of the sort, not even in embryo. He jumps from theme to theme, nodding toward thousands of questions, examining not a single one, and decreeing with amusing boldness the most decisive conclusions.

He himself was forced to acknowledge in the cited quotation that in Marx philosophy and political economy are linked into an integral materialist worldview. In Marx there is the broadest general philosophical conception!

These are not joking acknowledgments. A man forced to make them, and who speaks of critical revision of political economy and of its new methodological tasks, would be obliged to examine seriously all the individual constituent parts of this "integral" materialist worldview of Marx. Mr. Struve makes not the slightest even beginning of such an examination! He limits himself to dismissive remarks against "metaphysical materialism." Who does not know that from the standpoint of fashionable theories of agnosticism (Kantianism, positivism, empirio-criticism, etc.) both consistent materialism and consistent philosophical idealism are proclaimed "metaphysics." By making such remarks, Mr. Struve merely hints at his own philosophical worldview, alien to all integrity. But one cannot dismiss the examination and study of Marx's integral materialist worldview with such remarks. That means only testifying to one's own poverty.

III

By contrast, the comparison of Marxism with the scholastic doctrine of original sin represents such a pearl in Mr. Struve's scholarly work that one cannot pass over it in silence. We apologize beforehand to the reader for the long quotations, but here one must be precise in order to nail down more firmly the methods of modern liberal-professorial science.

"For me it is absolutely clear," writes Mr. Struve, "that Marx's theory of labor value, in its logical structure, had many centuries ago a grandiose analogy and prototype in the 'realistically' grounded scholastic doctrine of original sin... Just as in Marx empirical 'prices' are governed by the law of value, so to speak, derive their being from the substance of value, so for scholasticism empirical human actions are determined by original sin.

Here are several comparisons.

Marx: 'All this can be most easily represented if we regard the whole mass of commodities of a particular branch of production first as one commodity, and the sum of the prices of many identical commodities as the component parts which go to form one price; then what was said concerning the individual commodity applies literally to the mass of commodities on the market belonging to a given branch of production. The individual value of a commodity is coincident with its social value—this is realized or determined in the sense that the aggregate quantity of a given commodity contains the necessary social labor-time, and the value of this aggregate is equal to its market value.'{24}

Thomas Aquinas: 'We must say that all men, who are born of Adam, may be considered as one man, inasmuch as they share in a unity of nature, which they derive from him, just as, for example, all men, who live in one province, are considered as one body, and the whole province is considered as one man...'"

Is that enough? Mr. Struve assures us that this is "not a game with striking (!?) analogies and not cleverness." Perhaps. But it is certainly a game with vulgar analogies, or rather: sheer buffoonery. If scientists considering themselves liberal and progressive are capable of tolerating in their midst heroes of such buffoonery, if these heroes are awarded academic degrees and entrusted with the education of youth, then this only demonstrates for the hundredth and thousandth time the "law" of the bourgeois epoch: the more honor, the more brazen and shameless the mockery of science for the sake of destroying Marx.

Mr. Struve was forced to resort to buffoonery to cover his complete helplessness in refuting Marx. That all commodities of a given branch of production are exchanged for a sum of commodities of other branches—this is an indisputable fact. That average price is determined by any "empiricist" by taking the commodity mass and dividing its total price by the number of units of commodity—this again is a fact. Statistics dear to Mr. Struve (which he, as we shall see below, merely "nods toward" rather than undertaking to study) shows us at every step the application of the method employed by Marx. But what concern is all this to professional "socialist-eaters"? As long as they can kick at Marx, everything else will be added.

What philosophical authorities bless Mr. Struve for this noble occupation is evident, among other things, from the following words of our professor:

"In this work (the work of summing up all the mental labor of the nineteenth century) impartial posterity should devote a prominent place to the great French metaphysician Renouvier, to whom many of the critical and positive ideas of our time trace back" (43).

Renouvier—the head of the French school of "neo-critical idealism"—an "obscurantist of higher learning," as he was called by the empirio-critic (i.e., a philosopher hostile to materialism) Willy (see my remarks on Renouvier in the book: "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy." Moscow, 1909, p. 247{5}). Renouvier writes the word "law" with a capital letter and directly transforms it into the basis of religion.

Look then at the methods by which Mr. Struve destroys Marx's—by his own admission—"integral materialist worldview": Marx is equated with a medieval theologian on the basis, properly speaking, that Marx adds up the prices of commodities of one branch of production, while the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas adds up people descended from the progenitor Adam, to ground the doctrine of original sin. And at the same time Marx is destroyed in the name of the "great" Renouvier, who in the nineteenth century preached philosophical idealism that creates from the concept of "law" the basis of religion!!

Oh, Mr. Struve! Oh, disciple of the "great" Renouvier! Oh, called teacher of Russian youth!

IV

"In that enormous reconstruction," writes Mr. Struve, "which the edifice of political economy, founded on the idea of natural law, underwent in the face of the onslaught of historicism, both mystical and materialist, this idea suffered complete collapse. Its basic internal contradiction was revealed. It emerged most clearly perhaps in that form of 'natural' political economy which became the theoretical foundation of bourgeois economic liberalism... Indeed, if natural law reigns in economic life, then there cannot be facts of this life inconsistent with natural law, violating it. Meanwhile, liberal 'natural' political economy constantly conducted a struggle in books and in life against such facts... After the collapse of bourgeois-liberal political economy, it became even somewhat indecorous to speak of 'natural law.' On the one hand, it is plainly unscientific to separate out from the whole, which is in principle unified, socio-economic process certain separate sides, relations, phenomena, as 'natural,' and treat them as a special category of phenomena. On the other hand, the proclamation of 'natural law,' although it rested in economic liberalism itself upon an unconscious ethical motif, became ethically discredited as a device for justifying or perpetuating certain, only temporarily significant social relations and forms, as 'bourgeois' apologetics" (56–57).

Thus the author disposes of the idea of natural law. And this is written by a man who is forced to acknowledge that "materialist Marx stretches his hand across the whole of the eighteenth century to materialist Petty" (56) and that "Petty is the brightest, most conspicuous exponent of the mighty current which in that epoch ran toward social science from natural science" (50).

The mighty current toward social science from natural science ran, as is well known, not only in Petty's epoch but also in Marx's epoch. This current has remained no less, if not more, mighty even for the twentieth century. How then can one, in a work claiming to be scientific and setting itself the task of studying "philosophical motifs of economic thinking," raise the question of this "current" and of the materialism of Petty and Marx without clarifying absolutely nothing about the philosophical presuppositions and conclusions of natural science??

But this is precisely the manner of Struve: to raise or, rather, to touch upon a thousand and one questions, to "speak about" everything, to represent everything as weighed and accounted for, while in fact giving nothing but a mishmash of citations and cursory remarks.

It is a crying falsehood that the idea of natural law in political economy has suffered collapse, that it has become "indecorous" to speak of it. Precisely the opposite. Precisely the "current from natural science to social science" strengthens, continues to strengthen, and makes inevitable this idea. Precisely "materialist historicism" has definitively grounded this idea, purifying it of metaphysical (in the Marxist sense of the term, i.e., anti-dialectical) absurdities and defects. To say that the "natural law" of the classics is "ethically discredited" as bourgeois apologetics is to say unbearable nonsense, to distort both the classics and "materialist historicism" in the most reckless manner. For the classics groped for and did grope toward a whole series of "natural laws" of capitalism, without understanding its transient character, without seeing the class struggle within it. Both these defects are corrected by materialist historicism, and "ethical discrediting" here is completely beside the point.

By using exaggeratedly-"strong" words ("indecorous" to speak of "natural law"), Mr. Struve vainly attempts to hide behind them the fear of science, the fear of scientific analysis of present-day economy, characteristic of the bourgeoisie. Aristocratic skepticism characterizes it, like all declining classes, but the idea of natural law in the functioning and development of society does not decline but grows stronger and stronger.

V

Now let us look at those "rigorously elaborated precise concepts and clear distinctions" which Mr. Struve promises to provide for "formulating new methodological tasks" of political economy.

"...We define economy," we read on page 5, "as a subjective teleological unity of rational economic activity or housekeeping."

This sounds "terribly learned," but in reality represents the emptiest play with words. Economy is defined through housekeeping! Buttered butter... The "subjective unity of housekeeping" can exist in dreams and in fantastic novels.

Fearing to speak of the production of material products ("metaphysical materialism"!), Mr. Struve gave a toy, not a definition. Eliminating every element and sign of social relations, Mr. Struve "invented," as if on purpose, precisely such an "economy" as has never been and never could be the object of political economy.

Here, further, is the establishment of "three fundamental types of economic order": 1) an aggregation of economy standing side by side; 2) a system of interacting economies; and 3) "society-economy," as a "subjective teleological unity." To the 1st type, you see, belong economies not standing in any communion or interaction (an attempt to resurrect the notorious Robinson!); to the 2nd—both slavery and serfdom and capitalism and simple commodity production; to the 3rd—communism, which "was realized in the state of the Jesuits in Paraguay, insofar as it is at all realizable." This magnificent classification, in which there is not a shadow of historical reality, is complemented by a distinction between economic and social order.

Economic categories, Mr. Struve teaches us, "express the economic relations of any housekeeping subject to the external world"; inter-economic categories—"express phenomena arising from the interaction of autonomous economies"; social categories "arise from social inequality of housekeeping people standing in interaction."

Thus, the economic order of slavery, serfdom, capitalism can be logically, economically, historically separated from social inequality!! This is precisely what emerges from Mr. Struve's clumsy attempts to introduce new definitions and distinctions. "An aggregation of economy standing side by side can—reasoning abstractly—be combined with relations of equality or inequality. It can be peasant democracy and feudal society."

Thus reasons our author. From the standpoint of theory, both logical, economic, and historical, his reasoning is glaringly absurd. By subsuming anything whatsoever under the concept of "aggregation of economy standing side by side," he demonstrates with obviousness the emptiness of this concept. Both peasant democracy and feudalism and neighbors living side by side (on one staircase and in one apartment in a Petersburg building) are all an "aggregation of economy standing side by side"! The author has already forgotten that this aggregation should in his system characterize one of the three fundamental types of economic order. The "scientific" definitions and distinctions of Mr. Struve are simply—boots trampled into mush.

But a peculiar "sense" exists in this crude and vulgar game, in this mockery of logic and history. This is the "sense" of bourgeois despair and "couldn't-care-less-ism" (if one may so translate the French expression: "je m'en fiche"). Despair in the possibility of analyzing the present scientifically, refusal of science, desire to spit upon any generalizations, to hide from any "laws" of historical development, to obscure the forest with trees—this is the class sense of that fashionable bourgeois skepticism, that dead and deadening scholasticism which we see in Mr. Struve. "Social inequalities" need not be explained from the economic order, it is impossible (for it is undesirable for the bourgeoisie)—here is Mr. Struve's "theory." Let political economy occupy itself with truisms and scholasticism and senseless chasing after factoids (examples below), while the question of "social inequalities" moves into a safer realm of sociological-juridical arguments: there, in that realm, it is easier to "dispose of" these unpleasant questions.

Economic reality with striking obviousness shows us the class division of society as the foundation of the economic order of both capitalism and feudalism. The attention of science has been directed from the very appearance of political economy toward explaining this class division. The entire classical political economy made a series of steps along this path; Marx took another step further. And contemporary bourgeoisie is so frightened by this step, so worried by the "laws" of contemporary economic evolution, too obvious, too compelling, that bourgeois and their ideologists are ready to cast out all the classics and every law, only to consign to the archives of jurisprudence... all those... what do you call them... social inequalities.

VI

Mr. Struve is particularly eager to consign the concept of value to the archives. "Value," he writes, "as something distinct from price, independent of it, determining it, is a phantom" (96). "The category of objective value is merely, so to speak, a metaphysical duplication of the category of price" (97).

To destroy socialism, Mr. Struve chose the most... radical and easiest, but thereby also most insubstantial method: to deny science in general. The aristocratic skepticism of a bloated and intimidated bourgeois reaches here the ne plus ultra{6}. Like a lawyer in Dostoevsky, defending against an accusation of murder for robbery, talking himself into the position that robbery never happened and murder never happened, so Mr. Struve "refutes" Marx's theory of value by simply assuring us that value is a phantom.

"At present there is no need" (to refute the theory of objective value); "it is sufficient to describe it as we have done here and in our 'Introduction,' in order to show that it has no place and cannot have any place in scientific constructions" (97).

Well, how not to call this most "radical" method the most insubstantial? For thousands of years mankind has observed lawfulness in the phenomenon of exchange, has striven to understand and more precisely express it, has tested its explanations through millions and billions of daily observations of economic life—and suddenly a fashionable representative of a fashionable occupation—the gathering of citations (I almost said: the collecting of postage stamps)—"cancels all this": "value is a phantom."

It was said long ago that if the truths of mathematics injured the interests of people (the interests of classes in their struggle, more precisely), those truths would be hotly disputed. To dispute the irrefutable truths of economic science requires very, very little baggage. Insert, for example, the word that value is a phantom, something independent of price—and the matter is settled!

Never mind that this insertion is absurd. Price is the manifestation of the law of value. Value is the law of prices, i.e., the generalized expression of the phenomenon of price. One can speak of "independence" here only to mock science, which in all areas of knowledge shows us the manifestation of basic laws in the apparent chaos of phenomena.

Take, for example, the law of the change of species and the formation of higher species from lower ones. It would be very cheap to proclaim as phantoms the generalizations of natural science, the laws already found (recognized by all, despite the multitude of apparent violations and deviations in the diversity of individual cases), the search for corrections and supplements to them. In the realm of natural sciences, a man who said that the laws of phenomena of the natural world are phantoms would be placed in an insane asylum or simply mocked. In the realm of economic sciences, a man flaunting so boldly... in a state of undress... is eagerly appointed a professor, for he is indeed quite suitable for the stupefaction of bourgeois sons.

"Price is a fact. Let us say this: price is the concept of real exchange relation between goods being exchanged, is a realized exchange relation.

Value is a norm. Let us say this: value is the concept of an ideal, or ought, relation between goods in the process of exchange" (88).

Is it not characteristic of Mr. Struve, this careless, ostentatiously frivolous remark "let us say this"? Deliberately ponderous, coquetting with abstruse terms and neologisms, Mr. Struve suddenly shifts to a feuilleton tone... It would have been difficult to proclaim value a phantom without shifting to a feuilleton tone.

If price is a "realized exchange relation," then it is permissible to ask: between whom does this relation exist? Obviously, between exchanging economies. If this "exchange relation" does not arise accidentally as an exception, for a short time, but is repeated with unfailing regularity, everywhere and daily, then it is obvious that the "exchange relation" binds into one economic order an aggregate of economies; obviously, there is an established division of labor between these economies.

There you have it—all Mr. Struve's intricacies about "inter-economic" relations, supposedly separable from social relations, crumble like houses of cards. Mr. Struve threw out the concept of commodity production through the door in order secretly to slip it back through the window. Mr. Struve's notorious "empiricism" consists in the expulsion from science of generalizations unpleasant to the bourgeoisie, which nonetheless have to be recognized, so to speak, unofficially.

If price is an exchange relation, then it is inevitable to understand the difference between a single exchange relation and a constant one, between the accidental and the massive, between the momentary and the encompassing lengthy intervals of time. Once this is so—and it is indubitably so—we necessarily rise from the accidental and singular to the stable and massive, from price to value. Mr. Struve's attempt to declare value an "ought," to bring it closer to ethics or to the doctrine of the canonists, and so forth, falls like a house of cards.

By calling "empiricism" the acknowledgment of value as a phantom and "metaphysics" the striving (going "from Aristotle" to Marx—p. 91—one must still add: through all of classical political economy!)—the striving to find the law of formation and change of prices, Mr. Struve repeats the method of the newest philosophical reactionaries, who consider "metaphysics" the materialism of natural science in general, and proclaim "empiricism" a step toward religion. The expulsion of laws from science is in reality only the smuggling in of religious laws. In vain does Mr. Struve imagine that his "little tricks" can deceive anyone about this simple and undeniable fact.

VII

Mr. Struve, as we have seen, has avoided direct battle with Marxists, hiding himself behind skepticism in general. All the more assiduously does he scatter throughout his book remarks against Marxism, calculated to entangle a reader weighed down by heaps of disconnected, unsystematic citations.

There is presented, for example, a little citation from Saint-Simon, named a series of books on Saint-Simon (this practice of copying German bibliographical references is practiced by our "scholar" systematically—evidently as the surest path... to an academic degree), detailed excerpts from Renouvier on Saint-Simon are provided.

And the conclusion?

The conclusion is as follows: "Paradoxical as it may seem, it is a simply indisputable historical fact that the highest form of socialism, the so-called scientific socialism, is the child born of the union between revolutionary and reactionary thought" (51–52). For the path to scientific socialism runs through Saint-Simon, and "Saint-Simon was the disciple at one and the same time both of the Enlightenment philosophers of the eighteenth century and of the reactionaries of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century" (53). "This must always be remembered: historical materialism in its essence is the offspring of reaction against the spirit of the eighteenth century. It is, firstly, the reaction of organic worldview against rationalism, secondly, the reaction of economism against politicism. Saint-Simon, moreover, in his religious period represents the reaction of feeling and religion against the ideas of right and human justice" (54–55). And for reinforcement, Mr. Struve repeats once more: "Marxism is—the formulas of the French theocratic school and of historical counter-revolutionary reaction in general, translated into the language of positivism, atheism and radicalism. Having dismissed reason, Marx remained a revolutionary and socialist" (55)...

If Marx succeeded in adopting and developing further, on the one hand, the "spirit of the eighteenth century" in its struggle against feudal and priestly power of the Middle Ages, and on the other hand, economism and historicism (as well as dialectics) of philosophers and historians of the early nineteenth century, this only proves the depth and strength of Marxism, only confirms the opinion of those who see in Marxism the final word of science. That in the teachings of reactionary historians and philosophers there were profound thoughts concerning lawfulness and the struggle of classes in the change of political events—Marx always indicated this with clarity leaving no room for misunderstanding.

But Mr. Struve somersaults and declares that Marxism is the offspring of reaction, though he immediately adds that the path to Marxism is led not by the priestly Saint-Simon but by Saint-Simon the historian and economist!!

It turns out that by means of a cutting phrase, having said not a single serious word about what was the acquisition of social science made by Saint-Simon after the Enlightenment philosophers of the eighteenth century and before Marx, our author has jumped over all social science in general.

Since this science was built, first, by classical economists, discovering the law of value and the fundamental division of society into classes; since this science was further enriched, in connection with them, by eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers in their struggle against feudalism and priestcraft; since this science was advanced, despite their reactionary views, by nineteenth-century historians and philosophers, further clarifying the question of class struggle, developing the dialectical method and applying or beginning to apply it to social life; then Marxism, having made a series of enormous steps forward precisely along this path, is the highest development of all the historical, economic, and philosophical science of Europe. Such is the logical conclusion. But Mr. Struve's conclusion reads: therefore Marxism is not worth refuting, laws of value and so forth are not worth discussing, Marxism is the offspring of reaction!

Does Mr. Struve really count on deceiving his listeners with such crude methods and concealing his obscurantism?

VIII

Mr. Struve's scholarly work would not, of course, be a scholarly work presented for an academic degree if it had not "proven" the impossibility of socialism.

Perhaps you think this is an exaggeration? In a work devoted to the question of price and economy, as well as to "certain philosophical motifs" of political economy, to "prove" the impossibility of socialism without even approaching the study of the historical tendencies of capitalism?

Oh, for Mr. Struve this is—quite, quite simple! Listen:

"Ultimately, economic liberalism represents to itself the complete coincidence—on the basis of the realization of the 'natural law'—of the rational and the ought with the natural and necessary in the socio-economic process, its complete rationalization... Socialism in its most perfect form of historical or so-called scientific socialism, denying the 'natural law,' at the same time shares this fundamental idea of economic liberalism. It also assumes that harmony is possible between rational construction and the natural course of things, that complete rationalization of the socio-economic process is possible" (p. 58).

A few dismissive phrases about this "faith" (p. 59) and the conclusion of serious science (p. 60). (Paragraph 7 of Chapter 2 of the second section of the first part of Mr. Struve's "work"):

"Comparing the socialist and liberal ideal with the world of reality, scientific-empirical investigation must acknowledge that for it the faith contained in these ideals cannot exist. Both these ideals are in the formal sense equally unrealizable, equally utopian."

Truly, one hardly believes one's own eyes reading such things. To such a degree has contemporary professorial science reached derangement, decline, and prostitution! Mr. Struve knows perfectly well that scientific socialism rests upon the fact of the socialization of production by capitalism. This fact is proven by countless phenomena observed throughout the world. There exists the richest "empirical" material concerning the degree of development and rapidity of development of these phenomena.

But our scholar, bypassing the question of the socialization of production, having not touched with his "scientific-empirical investigation" a single area of the numerous facts, declares the question scientifically decided on the basis of a few empty phrases about liberalism and rationalization!

It is a lie that liberalism represents to itself complete rationalization. It is a lie that Marxism denies the "natural law." It is both incorrect and empty in general, the entire phrase about "complete rationalization"—all this are wretched evasions, flat games, pursuing a single aim: to evade the question clearly and precisely posed by scientific socialism, to flabbergast the student youth with noise and clamor about the impossibility of socialism.

IX

The enormous part of Mr. Struve's work, considerably more than half, is devoted to "studies and materials on the historical phenomenology of price."

Here was where our ardent supporter of "consistent empiricism," who declares value a phantom and studies prices as facts, could truly show himself!

The statistics of prices in recent years is making enormous progress. In all countries a mass of materials has been gathered. A whole series of works on the history of prices. If a strict scholar cannot even deign to refute Marx's theory of value, why not analyze at least some of the fundamental questions of this theory with the aid of "empirical" material from the history and statistics of prices? One can find thousands of commodities and hundreds of sections or periods from their price history when the influence of all manner